One of my biggest fears when I heard about DC’s New 52 was that they’d use it as an opportunity to cancel some of their smaller books that never got the attention (or, honestly, the audience) that Batman and Green Lantern got, but that I really enjoyed, like Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray’s Jonah Hex.

I don’t remember why I was so worried… oh yeah – because DC fucking cancelled Jonah Hex.

But I should have known that Jonah Hex is IMPOSSIBLE to kill (If the Goddamned movie couldn’t do it…)! DC’s kept Gray and Palmiotti on to script All-Star Western, which will be starring ALL of DC’s star western characters, including Jonah Hex, and…

Yeah, pretty much Jonah Hex.

This past weekend, DC released a motion comics trailer for the book, which you can see after the jump:

Bleeding Cool’s reporting that Batgirl #1 – which doesn’t even go on sale until tomorrow – is selling on eBay for ten bucks… which is more than triple the cover price.

Now granted, the book’s already sold out at the distributor level, but it’s already gone into a second printing (Which, if Justice League #1 is any guide, should turn around back into comic stores in a week or two), and again: IT HASN’T EVEN GONE ON FUCKING SALE YET.

This, of course, is not a problem for me, because when I heard this news I promptly emailed my local comic store owner, who knows me by name and asks after my general welfare when he sees me, and asked him to set a copy aside for me. Which I GUESS you could try with your iPad. It might respond. If it does, well… I’d say seek help, but the people sitting next to you on the bus while you whimper at your computer that you “Really want to get your hands on Batgirl” will probably make sure you get some whether you want it or not.

No, if you want an honest-to-God first print copy of Batgirl #1, your iPad won’t help you. But that’s understandable; if I’d ever taken my local comic store owner into an airline lavatory and made him perch on my lap while I masturbated, he wouldn’t help ME, either. (via Bleeding Cool)

CNN’s newly formed geek culture blog, Geek Out! has been covering Dragon*Con this week. This is good because I can’t set foot in Atlanta since my last, tragic attempt at cosplay there which involved Jack Daniels, a General Sherman costume and a pack of Twizzlers. Possibly in front of the CDC. No. I’m not going to explain, what with the “pending charges” and the “gag order”, but suffice to say: this Yankee will stay up here, thank you.

It’s too bad though, because apparently I missed Carrie Fisher making out with a fan:

I’m going to go watch A New Hope and cry a little.

Hey, who's got a job for the man? Anybody? Hello?

You know, just the other day I was thinking to myself, “Self? You know, no one’s cornholed our childhood recently. Isn’t it nice to sit down again?” Then I see on Fandango that Warner Brothers wants to reboot Beetlejuice and I have to go looking for my hemorrhoid donut again.

 

The reboot is part of a first-look deal signed by producer/director/writers David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith. As part of the deal, Grahame-Smith will write two scripts for Warner Bros., with the distinct possibility of Beetlejuice 2 being one of them. The duo collaborated on the MTV series The Hard Times of RJ Berger, based on a short film by Katzenberg about a well-endowed high school nerd.

Now to me, here’s some good news: Tony Daniel, the writer and artist on the DC Rebooted Detective Comics #1, did an interview with USA Today talking about how he’s writing some honest-to-Christ Batman whodunit stories, as opposed to stories about The World’s Greatest Caveman No Pilgrim No Why Is Batman Time Traveling Curse You Morrison Your Weed Is Laced Arrrgh.

The article has a bunch of art from Detective Comics #1. Check it out and come back…

Not only is Daniel apparently committed to doing some old school detective comics, he’s the first creator on a major DC book I’ve heard really taking advantage of the reboot to come up with some new villains:

Just came across this (Hey, it was a long weekend, and I live 250 yards from a liquor store, a bar and a comic store. I’m only human. A deeply, deeply broken human) – Marvel published a live blog of a conference call between writers Matt Fraction, Cullen Bunn, Christopher Yost and Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort where they talked about the upcoming followups to the Fear Itself storyline: The Fearless and Battle Scars.

Go check it out for details from the horses’ mouths (And for some pretty art from Mark Bagley, Paul Lelletier, Frank Cho and Art Adams), but the nuts and bolts are that, no matter what happens with the Serpent in Fear Itself, the Hammers of The Worthy are still gonna be kicking around, in areas like Utopia, New York, the ocean and other far-flung areas that, purely by coincidence, are the perfect locations for heroes and villains to easily locate them so they can punch each other.

Emo Angel is emo.

I’ve noticed, in the short history that this site has been live, that my posts have been DCnU centric. That’s a shame, because there’s certainly a wealth of other comic book business that is managing to make it out into the world, despite the sucking vacuum of the New 52. Did you know, for example, that a comic book store is launching in Toronto that is intended to be specifically for kids? This is exciting, because I often find myself standing in the middle of a comic store in downtown Toronto pissed that they won’t let me do keg stands because of all the teeming, unwashed masses of children that cling to my ankles like so many fleas. Now I can be surly in public in Toronto in peace.

What? Your comic store doesn’t let you do keg stands? You need a better comic store.

Did you know that Image Comics plans on releasing “Morning Glories” #12, “Screamland” #4 and “Spawn” #211 for sale September 7, 2011? Yes! New Spawn! The one thing in my life that is 1992, every day, all the time.

And, meanwhile, Dark Horse released Angel & Faith #1 last week. Part of the “Season 9” arc of the Buffyverse, “Angel & Faith”, written by Christos Gage with art from Rebekah Isaacs, finds Faith in possession of Rupert Giles’s mysterious journal of mystery. This is because Angel killed Giles at the end of Season 8. BUT! It’s not his fault, you see – he was under the influence of Twilight and, as we all know, Twilight ruins everything.

I was honestly kind of pissed when I first finished Secret Avengers 16; I tossed it on the table and said, “Thanks Warren, but I read it when it was called NextWave.” Then I remembered a few things:

  1. I LOVED NextWave and:
  2. I am a cynical mouthy douchebag prone to bitching prior to thinking, and:
  3. I hate your face. Fuck off.

Secret Avengers isn’t as over the top as NextWave was, I’m guessing because you can get away with being over the top when you’re dealing with characters nobody cares about. After all, it’s okay if Monica Rambeau stomps the testicles off of Forbush Man because even in the ranks of seriously antisocial, Mom’s basement dwelling superfandom, I defy you to find anyone who cares about what damage occurs to those testicles and / or the foot after the kick. Seriously, why not have Machine Man be a shitfaced misanthrope? Before that, he was forgotten. Which would probably make you a shitfaced misanthrope. But as usual, I digress.